Making Waves
Lauren Bernaldo
Quinn Ruelle remembers exactly where he was when his philanthropic juices began flowing. "We were living in a condo on Bonita Beach. The red tide was the worst I’d seen it," he says. "I thought, ‘Man, I’ve got to do something about this.’"

Two years ago, Ruelle, 44, founded Red Tide Relief, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding the cause of the toxic algae and minimizing its impact. "I’m an avid fisherman and I’ve seen red tide kill generations of fish. It’s a significant thing, considering what it does to sea life and the respiratory problems it causes for people."

Ruelle, who owns an electronics-distribution company in New Jersey, raises money for the effort by selling donated electronics on the organization’s Web site, www.redtiderelief.org. Red Tide Relief recently gave $50,000 to Florida Gulf Coast University to help create wet labs at the Vester/Marine Science site in Bonita Springs and to fund student research projects on the single-cell organism.

"Some of the people out there doing similar research are politically motivated, and I’m not a big fan of helping people with their own agendas, so that’s why I gave the money to FGCU," he says.

Right now, Red Tide Relief is a volunteer venture of four people. Among other tasks, Ruelle collects water samples and sends them to the state for testing. "They don’t get a lot of samples from 30, 50, 70 miles offshore, so we’re able to help them with the research they do," he says.

With Ruelle living in Bonita Springs, where he has since he moved into a house, he can see results of what they do. "My biggest concern is getting rid of red tide right here in Southwest Florida," he says. "I’d like to fix where we live."